


giver

by treesofsilverleaves (Mixed_Up_Crazy)



Series: guns don't kill people (but they sure make it a lot easier) [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied Relationships, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-02-17
Packaged: 2018-03-13 11:56:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3380609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mixed_Up_Crazy/pseuds/treesofsilverleaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They don't normally give each other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	giver

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure everyone has a different opinion of the arrow necklace from CATWS, so this is mine. It was supposed to be all fluff, but I guess I'm just an angst writer at heart uwu

_We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give._

_~Winston Churchill_

Neither of them are really the giving type.  It’s not that they’re selfish – although they are, sometimes, and that’s okay because if there’s anything she’s learned trying to escape the shadow of her past it’s that people are entitled to be selfish sometimes.  But no, it’s not for self-serving reasons.

The simplest way to put it would be that they don’t have the time, or the room, or the opportunity to afford too many luxuries.  In a life like theirs, where they’re constantly on the move and constantly in the midst of a battlefield, petty trinkets are a nuisance and the real meaningful stuff is easily lost.  Or broken.

(She tries not to think about the parallels between the problems with having too much stuff and the problems with trusting too many people.  She doesn’t want to think about him – about him being lost, or broken.  It happened once.  Never again.)

Pulling back the curtain, as ever, reveals the deeper motivations.  Their pasts splay out behind them like a trail of blood and deceit and regret.  Him, the circus boy turned thief turned mercenary, her, the little girl born to dance and raised to fell armies with a whisper and a knife.  Neither given anything but the tools to become what they did not want to be, but did not know how _not_ to be.

One cannot learn to give without first receiving.  They never quite learned how to do either.

And yet…

He was given a choice, a life, by someone who saw more in him than just what he was.  And in return, he saw the same in her, and offered her a choice, a new life, redemption.

She had been wary at first.  Distrustful.  But he was – he _saw_ her.  He saw something in her that even she couldn’t see, and she still didn’t trust him, didn’t know how to trust anyone, even herself.  But she accepted his offer, and everything changed.

All her life she had been given nothing but weapons and targets and orders.  This was new territory, being given a chance.  A choice.  She chose him.

They weren’t assigned to be partners right away.  Perhaps they might have, if the higher-ups thought it might work, but they were still cloaked in the shadows of their past, orders given with the expectation that they might not follow, might still be threats, might need to be eliminated.  She had to go through boot camp all over again, watched with scrutinizing gazes and suspicious trigger fingers.

He was there whenever the opportunity came along.  Taking responsibility, some thought, but the truth was that he was curious.  He was drawn to her, like a fly into her web, and he knew it.  But she was no longer a spider for the enemy, and she saw through him too much to devour him.  (Even if he might have welcomed it.)

She was drawn to him too.  His gaze was unlike that of the other SHIELD agents, studying her but not judging her.  He didn’t have some kind of agenda to push, not in the way they all pushed her, because they wanted to use her.  That was what they wanted, after all, whether it was for a greater good or not.  He wasn’t like that.  She found herself willing to try with him – to try to start trusting him.

They were too much alike to destroy each other.

She chose him, and he chose her, and in each other they found things that had been missing their entire lives.  He gave her a chance at a new life, and she gave him her trust, and they receive these gifts every day with the knowledge of how momentous they are.  Neither of them are really the giving type.

Perhaps that is why she teases him so much when she finds the necklace.  It’s Christmas Eve, and neither of them are religious – it’s hard to be after all they’ve been through, especially the New York Incident – but for once neither of them have anything to do except sip hot chocolate and watch whatever’s on the television at the moment.  (Cheesy Christmas films, of course.)  There’s no tree in the tiny, standard SHIELD-approved apartment, no decorations, no pictures or trinkets of any kind.

But when she stands to switch out her mug of hot chocolate for a more adult, alcoholic beverage, what she finds instead is a badly wrapped red box with a precise white bow, sitting right in front of a pitcher of what has to be eggnog.  She glances back at him, but he is studiously ignoring her in favor of a commercial for some kind of insurance.

So she carefully undoes the bow, and tears off the wrapping paper, and opens the box.  What she sees sets her mind racing.

Attached to a delicate loop of silver chain is a tiny silver arrow, the chain just long enough that the charm will rest slightly below her collarbone.  She takes the necklace out and holds it up, and if she were anyone else she would say that she couldn’t believe her eyes.  As it is, she’s definitely taken by surprise.  There is a small card in the box, but it doesn’t hold any answers to her questions, just a short message.

_Merry Christmas, Nat._

She turns around, and he’s still just sitting there, the light from the television flashing across his face, the very picture of relaxed.  She knows him, though, too well, and she walks into the room with a little teasing grin and says, “An arrow?  Really?”

He just shrugs, throwing her a smirk.  “They were out of guns,” he shoots back.  “Are you bringing the eggnog or what?”

She doesn’t say thank you, that’s still something she has trouble with, but she does come back with the eggnog and the cool, unfamiliar feeling of the chain resting against her neck.

Valentine’s Day the following year finds them in totally different places, on different missions, but she bribes and scares a few agents into making sure he gets her gift.  He finds a box wrapped in purple and white, and inside there’s a silver spider charm on a leather cord, along with a small card bearing only a short message.

_It’s only fair._

He grins.

Neither of them are really the giving type.  But there are always exceptions.


End file.
